Use of smartphone in cardiac rehabilitation programs. A systematic review

SUMMARY
The objective of this review is to know the usefulness of smartphones in cardiac rehabilitation programs as a therapeutic/telemonitoring modality and as a measuring instrument. For this, a search was made in the databases of Pubmed, Scopus, and Web Of Science. Clinical trials published between January 2012 and June 2017 were included. After the exclusion criteria were applied, 14 studies were selected. Different utilities of smartphones are evaluated in cardiac rehabilitation programs, a group of studies uses it to measure heart rate, another as monitoring to measure blood pressure and the last group focuses on performing physical activity. It is concluded that the smartphone has demonstrated its feasibility in cardiac rehabilitation, with positive effects on health and quality of life in patients and with promising results as a measuring instrument.

Keywords:
SmartphoneCardiac rehabilitationCardiovascular diseasesTelemonitoring
ABSTRACT
The aim of this review was to identify the usefulness of smartphones in cardiac rehabilitation programs as a therapeutic/telemonitoring modality and as a measurement instrument. To do this, a search was made in the databases of Pubmed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Clinical trials published between January 2012 and June 2017 were included. After the application of exclusion criteria, 14 studies were selected. The different utilities of the smartphone were evaluated in cardiac rehabilitation programs. One study group used the smartphone to measure heart rate, another to monitor blood pressure and a final group focused on performing physical activity. We conclude that the smartphone has demonstrated its feasibility in cardiac rehabilitation, with positive effects on health and quality of life in patients and with promising results as a measurement instrument.